I'm the founder and lead developer of the lightweight Linux distro Swift Linux. I find it ironic that a few of you think LMDE should be based on antiX/MEPIS at a time when I'm switching Swift Linux from an antiX/MEPIS base to an LMDE base. MEPIS Linux is good, but LMDE is much better. antiX/MEPIS doesn't have the superior driver/codec support of LMDE. For example, LMDE plays DVDs while antiX and MEPIS do not. LMDE is also evolving much more rapidly, and the Linux Mint team is accomplishing much more than the MEPIS team.

Linux Mint is the distro that I recommend for first-time Linux users. Mint sets the standards against which all other distros should be judged. In fact, I chose GitHub for version control and Launchpad.net for bug tracking because Linux Mint uses them.

It is a serious, KDE-centric distribution. Also, it is well known for it' stability. LMDE does not have a KDE suit so far. It points also to Testing -Stable is the "solid rock" staff! So, we cannot compare directly those two distros -apart from codecs support, installer, flexibility, how ready they are out of the box, etc..

Antix is a very nice distro. Installing pure debian in my laptop will take me more than thirty minutes, and then i ll have to add non-free repos and multimedia, just for the wireless to be activated. Antix is up and running in about ten minutes or less. It comes with wm's only so it is very simple to transform it in anything: xfce (my favourite) , kde etc..

LMDE Xfce seems more complete but, in my opinion, it lacks in this: it comes with many gnome applications and libraries, a really annoying thing. They did not want to present the "ideal", Xfce-centric desktop.

Mepis is a great distro. It is stable, has very good support for hardware and very light compared to other KDE distros. It has also very good battery support. Unfortunately, repositories for it ain't great. And using other deps lead me to a broken desktop. Also, it really lacks good localization.

utsuwa wrote:Mepis is a great distro. It is stable, has very good support for hardware and very light compared to other KDE distros. It has also very good battery support. Unfortunately, repositories for it ain't great. And using other deps lead me to a broken desktop. Also, it really lacks good localization.

Hmm, I've got it dual-booting on a desktop computer and it has been solid for more than 6 months. It has an active community and any problems I've had were quickly solved. I have seen a few problems with repositories. But I first learned Linux on Mepis and I probably did everything possible to mess it up and it never broke and still works well. This has caused me to wonder, and suggest a few times, that perhaps Mint LMDE would be well served to offer a rolling version based on Debian Stable, instead of Testing, for newbies, a distro that would be very hard to break. Might not have the latest software, but would be great for someone wanting a rock solid distro or simply for newbies.KBD47

One solution would be to have info/instructions in the release notes for those that want a stable system. If you change the repo for security to squeeze and substitute the word stable for testing in the others all updates will cease except security updates. It would then be pretty difficult to break the system. I did this a year ago for a neighbor and he's been very happy with it ever since.

tdockery97 wrote:One solution would be to have info/instructions in the release notes for those that want a stable system. If you change the repo for security to squeeze and substitute the word stable for testing in the others all updates will cease except security updates. It would then be pretty difficult to break the system. I did this a year ago for a neighbor and he's been very happy with it ever since.

That is a good idea. Someone more knowledgeable than me should write a wiki for it or start a thread or something. I also wonder how hard it would be to just set up a Debian Stable Mint version, maybe with an Xfce desktop, and a select version of reliable software, and those repositories you mention, maybe call label it "Mint Stable". I mentioned having trouble installing LMDE in Virtualbox and to a usb stick, how easy/difficult is it to install LMDE to a hard drive? SimplyMepis has a great, easy to use installer.KBD47

utsuwa wrote:Mepis is a great distro. It is stable, has very good support for hardware and very light compared to other KDE distros. It has also very good battery support. Unfortunately, repositories for it ain't great. And using other deps lead me to a broken desktop. Also, it really lacks good localization.

Hmm, I've got it dual-booting on a desktop computer and it has been solid for more than 6 months. It has an active community and any problems I've had were quickly solved. I have seen a few problems with repositories. But I first learned Linux on Mepis and I probably did everything possible to mess it up and it never broke and still works well. This has caused me to wonder, and suggest a few times, that perhaps Mint LMDE would be well served to offer a rolling version based on Debian Stable, instead of Testing, for newbies, a distro that would be very hard to break. Might not have the latest software, but would be great for someone wanting a rock solid distro or simply for newbies.KBD47

It depends on the reps. Also, I was doing an install for one of my friends that needed ibus and all the languages stuff. And it was a nightmare. Of course I didn't try the new Mepis. It was the 8.5 version (whichever is the previous). Maybe they have all the necessary stuff now. Last time the problem was that Mepis by default would always choose "own" reps over any other. So you had to disable them completely. Then comes upgrade or installation of a package, that will conflict with the Mepis' own package in reps and stuff - and everything breaks.

I used Mepis11 and had it on my netbook for awhile as well. Really beautiful distro, polished and surprisingly fast on my netbook. Really the only thing I didn't like about it was its poor font rendering, but I've also seen that in Kubuntu, so it may be a KDE thing. I know that when I installed Kubuntu desktop onto Ubuntu 11.10 it ruined my fonts and even after removing the Kubuntu desktop it left horrible font rendering behind, had to remove the fontconfig file to get it looking good again.KBD47

KBD47 wrote:I used Mepis11 and had it on my netbook for awhile as well. Really beautiful distro, polished and surprisingly fast on my netbook. Really the only thing I didn't like about it was its poor font rendering, but I've also seen that in Kubuntu, so it may be a KDE thing. I know that when I installed Kubuntu desktop onto Ubuntu 11.10 it ruined my fonts and even after removing the Kubuntu desktop it left horrible font rendering behind, had to remove the fontconfig file to get it looking good again.KBD47

I think it can be fixed if its a fontconfig issue. I never saw any problem like that with any other KDE distro, nor with 8.5 Mepis.

I choose Debian only if you can auto install the OS with out using gparted. Most people have no clue on how to do this. Another is the Nvidia drivers auto install or ask if you want to install it. It is hard to get away from ubuntu with these features, if your new to Linux. I do like Gnome 2.xx desktop.

windsphere wrote:I choose Debian only if you can auto install the OS with out using gparted. Most people have no clue on how to do this. Another is the Nvidia drivers auto install or ask if you want to install it. It is hard to get away from ubuntu with these features, if your new to Linux. I do like Gnome 2.xx desktop.

The Debian installer is actually really good (I wish LMDE used it, since I want the option to encrypt my system on install).

Sorry folks but mint 10 64 bit "performance" on the CPU Frequency Scaling Monitor, and stripped from eye candy, with goole chrome 17.0.942.0 dev, is still the fastest by far...... ( i tried them all from 9 debian, lxde etcboth on performance and internet browsing speed!Maybe the clever guys should pick it up from here instead?

I have used Ubuntu for 4 years and have been very happy until now. Everything after 10.04 has been fat, slow and buggy. I downgraded to 10.04 and recently upgraded directly to 12.04LTS hoping for an improvement. The same day I got rid of it and installed Mint12 - wonderful.Do what you like, but don't follow Ubuntu too closely!Thanks

i posted : follow ubunturight now it has the most thrust (and probably most money investement) of all linux desktopsalso they are going the userfriendly wayits because of them i made it into the linux world and i am happy with them, but i do not like unity or gome 3because of their confusing and not really ergonomic desktop design.

gnome 2 is perfect in its simplicity and how it is easy accessable from the mac and the win worldand thats what we want - right? ...to make more people come out of the corporate prison.

as i said i came over to mint because i do not like unity and gnome3 and i hope that mint does not do too much experimenting with desktop, but with user-friendlyness esp in the multimedia sector / codecs and stuffi like it also because it is stylish, but not overdesigned.

keep it simple should be the guiding line, but much power under the hood

dear mint people, thanks for all considerations, for all the work you are doing

There are 4 possibilities what to base on:a) Making an independent Distributionb) Basing on Ubuntuc) Basing on Debiand) Basing on something else

In the beginning it appears to be best if you make Linux Mint Independent. In the view of some people only independent distributions are considered as the only true ones. Over there you would get the full control over the system and stop relying on any externalities. But if you get closer, you will realise that there are a lot of downsides of this. First of all, maintaining an independent distribution takes a lot of time, in terms of just managing and maintaining thousands of packages. On condition of the success of our distro has been, that the developers needn't do the ugly basic management themselves, so the could spend their energy on improving the existing bits and producing tools witch make the system more usable. On top of that, it has been quite useful that Linux Mind could considered being basicly Ubuntu in various aspects, e.g. in case of troubles, or for exotic programs. So in my point of view, there isn't much evidence for getting all independent.Another possibility would be sticking to Ubunutu. The main problem with that is not being dependent on Canonical's latest ideas, but more technical ones. Since Linux Mind now use Cinnamon instead of Unity, I expect that there will be some technical problems based on the technological problems. Also there will be some troubles with applying Ubuntu manuals to Linux Mint, since the difference between the two systems has risen in the past. So if someone still assumes a similarity between both aspects in relation to the two systems, it would be difficult for him to realise that he has assumed wrongly. So staying with Ubuntu has it disadvantages as well.Basing on some completely different system would create a lot of troubles as well: If it's a Debian based distribution you could just base on Debian itself, if it's based on Ubuntu you could just base on this system as well. In case its a distribution witch bases neither on Ubuntu nor on Debian, you would have to change a lot of things in the system, so this isn't the way to go as well.So the final possibility would be basing on Debian. Debian has no favourite Desktop Environment, so using Cinnamon won't case any troubles. The only problem would be, that you either have to base on the super restrictive stable Releases of Debian, becoming a rolling release distro, or to host all packages for the releases ourselfs. But the Debian way is still the most convincing one in my point of view.

I would suppose making a Debian unstable based Release. LMDE will follow the roling release cycle from it. Evey half year, we are going to make a frozen copy of it witch will become the stable version of Linux Mint.

I believe mint team should continue to develop cinnamon and KDE based on Ubuntu, slowly merging the projects into a single OS, then try to place this on top of Debian, then, when and if it's appropriate and feasible, attempt to make the Debian based edition the main edition. This could take a while. Dabbling with xfce might pay off so I wouldn't abandon it, but use it as another "view" of how things can work. Yet, I believe that the merging of the KDE OS and the Cinnamon OS multi featured with with easy to install forms of cairo-dock and something similar to KPager, as optional add-ons, would satisfy the needs of those seeking basic functionality and eye and ear candy quite nicely. This last step could be done first actually and attract even more users in my opinion. Along with this last suggestion I would try to change the complicated sound set up in KDE to one more like that in Cinnamon.

This view I have is not well informed since I know little to nothing about programing etc. So I look forward to the corrections of this idea that devs might like to add.

Oh, and give regularly folks, a small monthly donation will add up and big donations might slip our minds far to easily, a strong steady flow of money even from small regular donations could be of great benefit in my opinion. Ideas without financial backing are useful, but with the backing in place real possibilites can emerge far more quickly.